


Gunboat

by scarecrowes



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Gen Work, Overstimulation, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarecrowes/pseuds/scarecrowes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>This planet is a gunboat in a sea of fear.</i>
</p><p>In which Will is momentarily overwhelmed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gunboat

**Author's Note:**

> Done for [this prompt](http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/1375.html?thread=22879#cmt22879) over at the Hannibal kinkmeme!

The room smells like glass cleaner and the stick of summer that creeps from outside. It's tense, has been since Will came in, since before that. It's a constant feeling broken only by the  _click-swish_ of the door opening,  _swish-click_ closing, and opening again between the footfalls of their own boys and the local PD. Following them, every time, are bursts of sound, of water cooler conversation, shouting to fended off reporters. The bark of a large, well trained dog. 

Normally Will would have fled by now, knowing how these things tend to go from his past at both ends. But Jack asked him to stay, if he could. And he could.

And he ran out of aspirin an hour ago. 

The typical map of victims is a perfect replica of the one up on Jack's board in Quantico, names pinned to faces to evidence to location. There's one more than there had been yesterday. 

Price and Katz are arguing about the wood fragments left inside the wounds, if it's a broken broom handle or something carved, why he'd do it postmortem when before he'd relished pain. Will wants to correct, remind them of the golden ticket girl, but they're too involved already. Jack's in the doorway yelling over his shoulder through the blur of unfamiliar voices, familiar chatter that they should be  _gone_ _already, this isn't a local job anymore -_

And Will notices Katz -  _Bev, she said to call her Bev -_ is staring at him. It hits him with the flavor of swallowed panic, age old and trained in since childhood _._

_You did something weird. You're doing it now. Stop. What are you doing? Stop._

"...Will?" Jack's voice is all confusion and steady concern. Will can hear him over the scrape of the chair he bumps into, backpedaling into the wall - but it seems so much louder, a shriek in the dark.

_Stop. Stop. Stop._

The pendulum's just whirling, no pattern, knotting painfully on its chain. Jack's voice, the well-trained dog somewhere behind it, snarls.

"Price, close the door!"

The chain locks in place, no give left to swing. Will lifts his hands to rub his eyes, forgets his glasses entirely - they jostle and clatter to the floor.

The noise turns muffled then, but he's already gone. Finding Alana's voice in the back of his head, talking about mean peacocks over a heart monitor beeping. Lecter telling him about the good of mirrors. Winston pawing at the edge of his comforter in the morning, Charlie jumping right up to bounce on his head, hungry and yapping, yapping, yapping...

Silence. The floor white and grainy between his shoes. 

Jack is crouching to see his face and holding his wrist in a vice grip, thick-rimmed glasses clutched in his other hand. Will notices, belatedly, the angry red crescents his nails have left in his palm.

He tries to pull away, grateful that Jack only fights for a second - still wants to snap,  _don't infantilize me, I'm fine, I'm fine, don't--_

But he can't find his voice yet.

He scrabbles back up the wall instead, focusing on breathing and his perfected art of not-looking, flush creeping up from his neck to his face. 

Breathe. Swallow. His head whirls and throbs; he skitters over the photos pinned to the wall, blurry as they are, instead of the others staring.

And he knows without looking that they are.

"It was a pike." He chokes out, the shoulder pushed to the wall like he could sink into it. "H-he put her on a pike. He... impaled her." 

Katz laughs, a nervous broken noise that Crawford probably glares at her for. Will understands. He takes his glasses from Jack's hand, and doesn't put them on. 

The chain starts to spin, slowly, unravelling from itself. The pendulum swings, bobbing to catch up.

"Does anyone have an aspirin?"

 

 


End file.
